XXVI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas

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Ausrraiia are far from being identicai with those of Fuegia. Further­
I}10re, as Lothrop has shown, the ¡atter have numerous affinities in sty1e
with various other craft in the southern half of South America and this
evidence w{)uld seem to indicate that they may represent the local elaboration
of some basic South American type. It is also important to note
that both Cooper and LOlhrop have demonstrated that the F uegians, like
the Australialis, exhibit no evidence cf having dege neraled as manufacturers
of watercraft but, on the contrary, have indicated a reacliness to
adopt more advanced types and to expand their maritime activities as
influences frol11 the nort/¡ have come to them.
To return now lo the question of a trans-oceanic !11ovement by Australians
some 3,000 years ago it seems clear that if we are to assume
that the Australians at that time had seadoing craft capable of reaching
South Ameri ca via what are now the Mtlanesian and Polynesian isJands,
and assume further that such a migration actuall}' ,vas macle and that
this type of crait subsequently degenerateu ancl left 110 traces whatso ~ ver
is either region, we are forced to ignore completely the evidence which
suggests a recent origin of sewn bark cano es in Australia, for since the
Australians are alleged to have introduced the latter into Tierra del
Fuego ipso facto these craft must have been in existence 3,000 years ago.
In his more recent studies Rivet has abandoned the theory of a trans­
Pacific migration in favor of an Antarctic route supposed to have been
traversecl some 6,000 years ago; ancl assumes that the seW J1 bark canoes
were in use even at that early ti me, although it is not stated speci fic ally
whether the alleged journey was made in them or whether they were
carried along in some hypothetical more substantial type of craft. In
his theory that the primitive Australians could have reached the New
World, and incidentally also South Africa, by following the Antarctic
con tinent Rive t adopts the suggestion of Tvlendes Correa that there was
a recession in glacial conditions at that time which made this region less
inhospitable than today. In support of such a contention another series
of assumptions is introduced for none of which 1 have been ab1e to discover
any satisfactory substantiating evidence.
In the first place th ere has been presented from Antarctica no good
evidence to indicate that clima tic conditions in recent geological times
were fundamentally different from those of today and the few available
data from other parts of the Southern hemisphere permit on1y the conclusions
that the suggested changes in those regions may have been no
more than minor f1uctuations invo1ving only a few degrees in mean
annual temperature. But even though \Ve could admit a similar change
in the c1imate of Antarctica a few degress change would be insufficient
to permit the sl1pposition that conditions were aJ tered to the extent that
human beings equipped on1y with loose skin mantles and erude hl1ts